1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to DNS (Domain Name System) lookups, and more particularly to determining an IP address according to a user's geographic location.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays, some web service providers provide regional websites for various countries/regions in addition to a general website, and each regional website may provide services in which users in that country/region are more interested and which may use a language popular in that country/region. For example, Yahoo! provides a general website Yahoo! corresponding to a URL www.yahoo.com, and regional websites Yahoo! Italy corresponding to a URL it.yahoo.com to users in Italy, and Yahoo! Singapore corresponding to a URL sg.yahoo.com to users in Singapore.
The URL www.yahoo.com is static and always resolves to Yahoo!'s general website, i.e., Yahoo! (which is also Yahoo! US corresponding to URL us.yahoo.com), irrespective of the requesting user's geographic location. To load a regional website, e.g., Yahoo! Italy, a user may have to type the URL for the regional website it.yahoo.com. Less technical savvy users may not know the URL for a regional website. If a user types in www.yahoo.com, he may be directed to the general website Yahoo! even though the user is in Italy. In addition, since www.yahoo.com uses English, a user who does not speak English may not be able to figure out how to go to it.yahoo.com from www.yahoo.com, and may simply give up. Consequently, the web service provider may lose users.
Sometimes users may only know the name of a company, but do not know the URL of its website. If a user searches for the website of this company, he may be directed to the general website of the company and may face the same problem. The company may lose potential customers in this scenario.
With currently available technologies, a web service provider may redirect a user from its general website to one of its regional websites according to the user's geographic location. FIG. 1 illustrates a currently available system for redirecting a user to a regional website of a web service provider. As shown, a web service provider, e.g., Yahoo!, may have a number of associated web servers 104a, 104b and 104c, each of which may run a website of the web service provider. For example, the web server 104a may run a general website www.yahoo.com, a web server 104b may run a regional website for Italy it.yahoo.com, and a web server 104c may run a regional website for Singapore sg.yahoo.com.
A user in Italy may type the URL of the general website of a web service provider Yahoo!, i.e., www.yahoo.com, into the address bar of his web browser 101.
A DNS (Domain Name System) server 102 may receive the URL request via a network 103, e.g., the Internet. A DNS server is used to translate a URL into an IP address. An IP address is a group of numbers for identifying a web server on the Internet, and is used by networking equipment for information delivery. For example, the IP address of the web server for www.yahoo.com is 66.94.234.13. Since it is easier to remember names than to remember long numbers, users may use a name of a web server, e.g., www.yahoo.com, when communicating with computer systems.
The DNS server 102 may resolve the URL www.yahoo.com from the web browser 101 into the IP address of a web server 104a which runs the general website www.yahoo.com of the web service provider Yahoo!, and the user's computer and the web server 104a may be connected. The web server 104a may determine from the user's IP address that the user is in Italy, and connect the user's computer with an associated web server 104b which runs Yahoo!'s regional website for Italy it.yahoo.com. As a result, the user may be redirected to Yahoo!'s regional website for Italy.
Since the system shown in FIG. 1 resolves the URL from the user to an IP address without considering the user's location, and then redirects the user to a regional website, it may cause delays. Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a system and method which may resolve a high level domain to a website based on a user's geographic location.